Materia Changes in 3.2:

[Colorful]

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I just wrote a wall of text and ended up closing my tab, dammit. Well I'll TL;DR it.

With 3.2 we're going to have the ability to "upgrade" the gear, but in a very linear way that isn't interesting and it still doesn't implement what players have been asking for, horizontal progression and meaningful stats. You said you disliked swapping out gear you just got a few months ago, and I agree, but this won't change that. We're still going to be changing out our gear everything even numbered patch. I don't dislike the concept of materia, but I dislike the implementation. I have no clue if you've played WoW, but you could upgrade, gem, and enchant gear. The first option was trading in a currency to get flat bonus on ilvls and stats which is no different from our materia system, but we have the illusion of choice. In reality if you were to use a useless materia on your gear, or anything that wasn't close to BiS you'd be considered a bad/uninformed player by anyone who inspected you.

Why'd I bring up WoW? In WoW the points you used could be obtained for daily tasks that you would do regardless, similar to the Anima (although I only log in to tend the garden and send out retainers for now, not interested in the Anima). Dungeons and raids, sure you could grind them in a dozen hours but that would be incredibly boring. In FFXIV it's spiritbond or do the Diadem, there isn't even an illusion of choice there as spiritbonding is faster in the Diadem. Now, if Materia was separate from the spoils I could jump in with the mindset "Hey, at least I'm working towards my Pegasus.", or "I'm making gil with the materials too." but that isn't the case, you're farming for the materia and nothing else. I won't argue that it won't improve your experience as you seem to enjoy "hidden" grinds, but it's not something I'd personally enjoy as I've had it up with everything they've implemented recently being focused on keeping people subscribed for as long as possible and not to have fun. I'll be taking people's advice and likely taking the materia thing very slowly, doing Diadem a few times a week and see how it goes, I don't exactly do anything that would require BiS gear (I really don't do much other than chat with friends in game and babble on these forums awaiting a permanent ban really).

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The forum exists for discussion and not a circlejerk about the almighty FFXIV, if something changes that I dislike I'll express that I dislike it. If you don't like my opinion you can ignore it, as my posts are optional and will not affect you in anyway as you've suggested I do with the materia system, or argue against it without resorting to "Deal with it" in a similar manner to Ravnika's posts. I don't exactly like how easy dungeons are, I want content that's a reasonable challenge but not too difficult without a static, which is why I'm glad they're bringing back Extreme primals with Sephirot, and that's obviously not going to be tuned with Tomestones of Transcendence(?) gear in mind. I'm more displeased with the way they implement fan requests, people asked for interesting stats, not more numbers of the boring stats.

[Ravnika]

I just wrote a wall of text and ended up closing my tab, dammit. Well I'll TL;DR it.

I've done that before @_@;;

I used to play WoW, but part way through WoTLK everything just imploded for me so I stopped.

I don't mind having to change my gear every couple of months. I do mind that when RNGod finally shines his sparkling godlike eyes of blue and magnificent cheek bones upon me, I get a new chestpiece (for example) - or I just finally get the tomestones - and.... uhm... >_> <_< >_> what now? I don't do super hard-core raiding, I don't have the time/energy/will to do that. I don't really do primals all that much either, for the same reason. I do a bunch of random things all together all the time, depending on my mood. I don't mind that I'm not BiS. If someone tries to belittle me for not having BiS materia, I'll probably just reply, "When my less than perfect materia causes us to wipe, lemme know" and proceed to rock what content I do.

I love my character. I love the mental story and images I have of her, I want materia in her gear for just a pure sense of self satisfaction that my character has glow jewels in her gear (I'd love it if melding the materia in the new gear actually altered the appearance a little, but I doubt that'll happen.) There are probably a lot of people like me who just like gathering dood-dads and progressing in any way they can as they lolly-gag around in a world and story they enjoy (and who maybe stare awkwardly at Ser Aymeric a little TOO much.)

And basically your last few sentences are the point I was trying to make earlier in a more simplistic way.

Express concerns (as you have been doing)? Cool, we can discuss that.

DOOMSAY AND DENOUNCE before seeing what is going to happen (as others tend to do and have)? I do not like you. I do not like your face. Come here so I can stab your eye with a card.

But really, a lot of the systems SE is putting in place is meant to be taken at "work at it as you do" and not "SHOVEL IT INTO YOUR MOUTH UNTIL ALL YOU CAN TASTE IS SALT" pace that so many others are adamant about doing. I hope (and I think) that you will enjoy the materia system a lot more if you do it the way you plan (or "the journey" method, as I like to call it), instead of trying to just put your nose to a grindwheel and hold it until it's a bloody mess of cartilage and tears.